The Cairo Film Festival has been suffering a hard bout of criticism and attacks from Israel because of its opening film about the Palestinian Intifada.

According to Agence France Presse, the Chairwoman of the Jerusalem Israeli Film Festival expressed her disappointment with the Cairo Festival and said that the move is yet another Arab seed of hate and war against the Jewish State.

The Israeli Film industry also expressed its anger about the lack of Israeli films in this year’s Cairo Festival.

According to AFP, the Festival’s administration kept rebutting Israeli efforts to participate in the event.

However, Chairman of the Festival, Hussein Fahmi has maintained that the festival is not, and will never be, politically steered.

However, the pressure coming from both participants and Egyptian citizens, has forced the festival to take the atrocities committed against the Palestinian people into consideration and respect the will of the Arab people.

Hussein was then forced to begin the festival with a movie on the Intifada, which helped cool public opinion.

However, the Israeli attack is not the only challenge faced by the festival this year. The absence of some International stars that were invited to the event also had a negative effect on the importance of the festival, especially with the foreign press.

Furthermore, Fahmi was personally criticized for inviting famous Italian actress Sophia Loren, who is well known for her role as an Israeli police woman who plots to kill an Arab resistance fighter in an American film.

The anger against Loren extends from last year’s festival when the actress refused to attend because of previous engagements at an Israeli festival.

All these factors forced Fahmi to usher the stars himself.

This year’s festival has been faced with various hindrances including a lack of Arab and Egyptian films.

The only movie representing Egypt in this year’s itinerary is Khaled Youssef’s Al Asifa (The Storm). – Albawaba.com.